Falling in love while helping a cat woman return to her Earth alone leaves an insular college student struggling to maintain his belief in her and find a way through the gateway.
RivercoonPenpusher
Falling in love while helping a cat woman return to her Earth alone leaves an insular college student struggling to maintain his belief in her and find a way through the gateway.
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This logline is a slight bit unclear
I think the best starting point would be, what event sets this story in motion?
When (This happens) an Insular college student must… ???
Once you have this event down in the logline, then I think the rest will fall into place.
As Richiev said, it’s difficult to figure out what the plot of the story is.
The falling in love seems to be the “B” story, what happens after he decides to rescue. ?Loglines are about the “A” story, not the “B” story. ?And the “A” story is about what a protagonist does as a result of the inciting incident. ?So start with the inciting incident. ?What causes the protagonist to come to the rescue of this “cat woman”.
(And what is being a “cat woman” all about, anyway? ?Why does he need to believe in her? ?What does “believe in her” mean? What’s at stake in the story?)
When an insular college student encounters an anthropomorphic cat accidentally stuck in our world and helps her get home he finds his best friend thinks he made her up and he can?t get to her.
Is this better?
Why does what some one else think matter to the protagonist? ?What difference does it make? ?Why must he make his best friend realize he’s not making her up?
>>>?could just say you have to read the script, but?
I could just say that the purpose of a logline is to make me want to read the script. ?And withholding a vital piece of information like the stakes and urgency (why it matters that the character MUST achieve his objective goal) doesn’t whet my interest. ?
Consider: in a way, this exchange between us mimics your plot. ?You believe “X” and I’m trying to persuade you to change your mind and ?believe “Y”. ?What is at stake in our exchange here? ?My ego, ?my ability to to persuades you that I am right ?and that you need to see the situation my way?
Well, it is so stipulated that I am an egotistical, highly critical — too critical — SOB. ?But I’m not the protagonist of this ?exchange. ?You are, Rivercoon. ?This is your logline. ?I have no material interest, no personal investment in the outcome of this logline. ?You do. You have an objective goal in presenting it here: ?to get your script made into a movie. ?Right?
What are the personal stakes? ?Real money, of course. ?And more important for you, the realization of your Biggest Dream, which, I presume is to break into show business as a screenwriter.
Now apply that to the story of the college student.? Specifically, as a result of encountering the cat woman, what becomes ?the his Biggest Dream??
Is his Biggest Dream to merely persuade his friend to ?believe his story?
Well, obviously not.
You say that he is in jeopardy of falling back into a humdrum life. Well, that’s only the negative side of the dramatic coin. ? That’s not sufficient for the purpose of either a logline or a plot. ?A logline and plot have to feature/focus on the flip side of the coin, on the positive, ?on ?the protagonist’s Biggest Dream.
What is his Biggest Dream? ?What is the positive option to his humdrum life created by his encounter with the cat woman? ?Whatever it is, that is what the logline should focus on.
Is
A nerdy college student encountering a lost hitchhiker from a parallel Earth leads him to love found, love lost and a struggle to find his love again. So what if she isn?t human.
too vague and high concept?
Cat woman in outer space? Sign me up!
College student is the protagonist? ?I recommend focusing the log on him and his conflict and struggles, which is, I assume, the gateway?
—A nerdy college student encountering a lost hitchhiker from a parallel Earth leads him to love found, love lost and a struggle to find his love again. So what if she isn?t human.—
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In the latest attempt, your lead character isn’t pro-active but is led by the cat woman. If this were the case that would make the cat woman the lead character.
However, if we stick with the college student as the lead, then I would recommend adding to the logline specifically what he must do.
Must the lead get the cat woman to a specific place where the walls between dimensions are thin?
Must the lead break into his own college science lab and get a scientific do-hickey so she can build a portal?
Must the lead seek out a reclusive astral physicist who can help them create the portal?
Specifically what must the lead do to achieve the goal of helping the cat woman back to her dimension? (And what is standing in the way)
A nerdy college student?s decision to help a lost hitchhiker from a parallel Earth get home leads to love. But when the gateway between worlds proves unreliable he must maintain faith in his memory of her while finding his own way through.
I didn’t read the other comments, sorry if I repeat some of the others.
This is confusing at best. The MC is the student, but it is unclear what he wants and why?
What is the plot in this story? What event starts it, what motivates the MC and what is his goal? To get through the gateway sounds like a step on the way to achieving something else.
If the Catwoman is in danger and he just so happens to be the only one who knows it then you could make it out that his goal is to save her, but as it stands the motivation feels labored and the goal/action are unclear.
A romantic idealist returns a lost humanoid feline to her parallel Earth but must battle amorous advances and hardened skeptics at college while piecing together tenuous clues to reopen the gateway to the woman he now loves.
Rivercoon,
All the previous comments to the older versions of the logline apply to the latest as well.
You need higher stakes and cinematic actions/events.